Times 24518: in a 17 until we 6 to 5? And happy Earth Day.

43 comments on “Times 24518: in a 17 until we 6 to 5? And happy Earth Day.”

1. Hi George, and Ulaca as well. About 30 minutes here, first in PLANT, last HONOURS. The top half I found tricky apart from PLANT and RUN IN, so I did the bottom first. Didn’t know FIDELIO (sorry music fans), PODAGRA, or that dressing had anything to do with clobbering. Overall though, not bad with some nice stuff here. Particularly liked the GATED COMMUNITY, the big ‘moose run’ anagram, and THOUSANDS. Will be gone for a week, and probably won’t participate again for several days, so enjoy what they offer in the meanwhile. Regards to all.
2. Maybe I’d have done better half-cut, but as it is I feel like I’ve gone 12 rounds with Mike Tyson. Finished in two minutes shy of two hours, with HONOURS last in. CHATHAM slowed me up, as I wanted to put CANNING in for some reason. NE corner last in.

   Among all the fine clues, my COD to the very topical 1 across, SOPORIFIC, which, unlike George, I got from the definition, but, since that is always less certain, delayed entering until I had worked out the cryptic.

3. …I had put on a good reggae album to do this, and I started to rock out and listen instead of concentrating on the puzzle. After two sides, I only had about a third done. So then I decided to call for silence, and finished up in another 20 minutes.

   I did have a little difficulty, because I put in ‘pelagra’ instead of ‘podagra’, but I eventually got that sorted, and saw ‘dresser’, without understanding the wordplay.

   George neglects to note that ‘sky’ = ‘TV’ is strictly UK, and may trip up non-Anglophile US solvers.

   I thought ‘Fidelio’ and (the Earl of) ‘Chatham’ were very clever, as was ‘croquette’, where a wrong theory gave me considerable trouble.

4. 27 minutes, which was a bit annoyed about till I saw it matched esteemed commentator’s time (and he had the advantage of a zinging alcoholic stimulus). Also with him on unfamiliarity with 10 and 19. Whole thing a tricky little number – like a cricket-ball just too difficult to catch properly.
5. I got off to a really bad start today and had been going for 10 minutes before I wrote in my first answer, LIMBER at 20dn.

   The next 20 minutes were more successful and I managed to complete all of the lower half and most of the NW before grinding to a halt with 1ac, 4dn and all of the NE apart from RAKISH missing. And that was when everything started to go wrong.

   Firstly I put RUN UP at 6dn, then I thought of OTHELLO for 4dn which led me to consider SUPERSOFT at 1ac and trying to think of a Prime Minister T?????M to go at 5dn. None of these could be justified by wordplay of course. Oh, and I had mistakenly marked 10ac as 4,5 instead of 5,4 so that didn;t help matters.

   On arrival at work I cheated to solve 1ac and then everything fell into place, though I have never heard of DRAWN WORK so I needed to look that up to check it.

   It was an extremely fair puzzle with very little special knowledge needed and I look back on it now wondering why I found it so difficult.

6. Ditto Jack on wondering why this was a struggle. Hazarded DRAWN WORK after discarding Rider, didn’t know Virgin meant Virgo (my Latin again), wild guess at PODAGRA (didn’t know POD as school), and didn’t think mites had a gender (and still don’t). Not much in the way of humour and no doh moments so all a bit of a grind.
7. 23 minutes, so as far as I’m concerned, the hardest so far this week. Like others, I found the bottom half much easier than the top, and the NE corner decidedly obdurate, I think at least in part because DRAWN WORK, while I can see where it’s coming from, doesn’t feel well defined. And I so wanted 6d to be RUN UP, but couldn’t make ruup mean anything. I thought HONOURS was splendidly misleading, and lost “a long time” trying to fit in age, eon and the usual suspects.
   Again, like others, once completed, I couldn’t really see why it took longer today. CoD to SOPORIFIC, at least in part for NOT making very quiet PP and again trapping those of us who too easily imitate the Chief of Police in Casablanca, and “round up the usual suspects”.
8. A difficult one which I found quite rewarding. Nothing too challenging in the vocab – except podagra which was new to me – but the cluing was tough. Not sure I understand all of them, even when solved – e.g. RUN IN for “prepare [to deliver]”. Completed in two lengthy sittings (first yielding just four clues in about 20 minutes) so time not recorded, mercifully.
   1. This is a cricketing reference. The bowler, having marked out his run-up, will then run in to deliver the ball to the batsman. Simple.
      1. Argh. Of course. Thank you.
9. 11:08 for this – poor start, but there was a run of easy clues towards the end of the first scan – got 5 of the last 7 downs on first look, plus AGRA as the end of 19 (18 was the exception). I then worked upwards.

   Reasons for difficulty in this puzzle:

   1A Very quiet ≠ pp (that symbol should be the “not equals” sign, just in case …), and mouth = ORIFICE
   10 Haggard ≠ RIDER
   13 Marxist = COMMUNIST – not RED, MAO, CASTRO, LENIN or STALIN
   7 Game = CROQUET rather than RU or GO

   DRAWN WORK and PODAGRA as words you were unlikely to guess from the definition.

   I think George skipped the word “opera” at the end of 4D. Fidelio is maybe best known for having four different overtures, but the best moment is probably Florestan’s aria at the beginning of Act 2.

   1. Explain, please *leg extended in kicking position*
      1. Go here …
   2. Thanks, Peter, I’m surprised that was the only fluff I made.
10. …Rhode Island is the first state you think of. Pod = school also came to me immediately so a distinct feeling of progress this morning for this relative beginner (I’ve only been at it for about a decade…)
    FIDE was new to me (but mentally filed for next time) and like others I’d never heard of drawn work or podagra, but they couldn’t really be anything else. 18 minutes so finished on the tube for the second day in a row. It can’t last.
11. 12:23, with a brief phone interruption. Took an age to see CHATHAM even though I had Hath, and slowed myself down by thinking of John Gay rather than Thomas Gray. SOPOROFIC was also a long time coming, but I quite liked the puzzle. PODAGRA was new to me (the word, not the symptoms)
12. Again, can’t record a time: cobbled together between classes. But I’d say medium difficulty. Some of the clue structures are rather difficult and there may be problems with some of them. For example, “falling” as an anagind in 21ac; and the inexplicable (as far as I can see) “I’m” in 26ac.
    1. 26A is just imitating a particular style of puzzle clue or quiz question – “My first is in crossword but not in cryptic, [etc.]” or “I am a composer who wrote four overtures for the same opera”.
       1. In the first example, ‘My” refers to the subject of the puzzle (whatever it turns out to be). In the second, “I” refers to Beethoven. To what does the “I” in 26ac refer? It would appear from the syntax to be “fighter”.
          1. Well, Beethoven is “the subject of the puzzle” too. So is the answer to 26A. It just uses “I’m” instead of “I am”. – “I’m (i) a fighter old (=A,MIG,O), (ii) friend = AMIGO.”
13. The three terms that I did not know: podagra, Chatham and drawn work were readily gettable from the wordplay. I have even know since Monday, that Agra was probably founded in 1566. I was not at all happy about drawn work even with the clear wordplay but the only other phrase I could think of was drawn cork so it had to be.

    I particularly liked the clues to soporific and thousands. I was not so keen on dresser because I think a dresser is someone who puts on clobber rather than gets clobbered. I also was not happy with run in, in preference to run up but I know nothing about cricket and those who do have not complained. Finally I am not sure about Sky = television even in a News International publication.

    I liked 7 and wanted to put in a link to “Chicken Croquette” the Sprits of Rhythm parody of Guy Lombardo’s Coquette but I find that it is one of the few songs that has yet to make it to Youtube.

    1. “Clobbered” uses a very old Times crossword trick – some time in the early days, Adrian Bell or another early Times setter came up with “A wicked thing” as a cryptic definition for CANDLE. Others have been using invented versions of {XXXed = “furnished/equipped with XXX”} ever since. Probably even older than {flower = a river}.
       1. Hmm. I see your point but “one getting furnished/equipped with clobber” is a bit clunky, probably because of the “getting”. It would probably work better, using your wicked example, if the clue had read “…one who is clobbered.” The dresser is equipped with clobber. The actor is getting equipped with clobber.
          1. There’s a bit more trickery – a dresser being seen as someone putting on their own kit rather than dressing someone else. For most of us this is implicit in dresser as in “snappy dresser”, though it’s not an explicit dictionary definition in Collins or COED.

             As ‘dress’ is both transitive and intransitive, either kind of dresser could be derived by standard cryptic crossword trickery – the flower=river trick. The potentially confusing fact that the “Theatre worker” here works with the same kind of “clobber” is just part of the fun.

             1. Thanks, I see what you mean. So the clue is really a DD with “Theatre worker” and “one getting clobbered” having nothing to do with each other. Which, if I look back, is what George said in the first place.
    2. I think the key (besides, of course, the wordplay ‘amid physical collapse’) is that we are looking for a verb (or verbal phrase) as the solution to ‘prepare to deliver’. Although ‘run up’ [to bowl] is used, it is far less common than ‘run in’ [to bowl]. Thus, there are 64 occurences of ‘McGrath runs in to bowl’ on Google, as opposed to just one for ‘McGrath runs up to bowl’. Part of the reason for this is that ‘run up’, in cricketing circles, is typically used as a nominal phrase, often marked as such by being hyphenated. In addition to this, ‘run-up’ is ambiguous: it can be used to refer (a) to the bowler on his way to the wicket to deliver and (b) to the bowler marking out the place from which he will start to run in. In the latter case, he marks this out by walking (or sometimes running – simulating his action) from the wicket towards the boundary. So, you might have “McGrath injured himself in his run-up” (a) and “McGrath is marking out his run-up in his faded green baggy cap” (b).
       1. You can possibly prove anything with Google searches: a less specific search for [“running in to bowl” cricket] beats [“running up to bowl” cricket] by about 6,000 to 1,000. (As unhyphenated phrases without “something/someone” , “run up” and “run in” are both missing from COED and Collins, as far as I can tell.)
14. I’m very excited as I managed the entire bottom half without resorting to cheating. A first for me.

    Finally gave up on 1D and then shrieked in frustration as I should have seen it and thus, opened up that corner.

    Live and learn…

    1. Well done, but more advice …

       Left and top edge answers well worth getting – but don’t worry too much about getting them first – last letters can be as useful as first ones, and so can middle ones, especially relatively unusual ones like the M at the 5/13 crossing or the K at 8/10. I’m pretty sure I needed at least ???? S?G? from checkers to see 1D today. Fortunately I saw the autograph-SIGN link from that and then got the rest. If I’d been left looking for words to fit S?G?, I can imagine myself not seeing N as a possible last letter.

15. A good challenging puzzle. Like most others found the southern hemisphere much easier than the northern. I’m going to moan about ted=tough again – we weren’t. The rest is excellent. 30 minutes to solve.
    1. Well the dictionaries think that at least some of you were – OED: (my underining, “tough” citations only)

       Teddy boy A youth affecting a style of dress and appearance held to be characteristic of Edward VII’s reign, typically a long velvet-collared jacket and ‘drain-pipe’ trousers (see drape suit s.v. DRAPE n.1 d) and sideburns; in extended use, any youthful street rowdy. Hence Teddy-boyish a., characteristic of a Teddy boy; Teddy-boyism, the state or condition of being a Teddy boy; group behaviour of a kind associated with Teddy boys. Similarly Teddy girl, a girl who associates with or behaves like Teddy boys.

       1954 A. HECKSTALL-SMITH Eighteen Months x. 118 Craig was just such a fellow. Ronald Coleman, the leader of the ‘Edwardians’ or the ‘Teddy Boys’, the gang of young hooligans who ran amok on Clapham Common, was another. 1957 Sunday Times 17 Feb. 4/4 The girls who are an integral part of the gangs – the so-called Teddy-girls – are probably the worst influence of all. 1959 Times 9 Oct. 15/7 The growing tide of teddy-boyism, chiefly in the Athens-Piraeus area, forced the authorities to act. 1960 Guardian 7 May 6/6 Looking back with teddy-boyish anger. 1977 Daily Tel. 19 July 15/4 A group of about 40 ‘punk rockers’ being chased by Teddy boys.

       1. (and the “any youthful street rowdy” idea is repeated in Collins)
       2. Indeed but as we know from set theory the fact that a small number of hooligans were Teddy Boys does not mean that all Teddy Boys were hooligans – and indeed the very opposite was the truth of the matter.

          The Teddy Boy phenomenon was part of a very important schism in our society that presaged the demise of the Eden, Macmillan, Home era and its replacement by the Wilson, Heath, Thatcher era. It was the use of outlandish fashion to express a dissatisfaction with a society based upon “know your place”.

          The popular press found it difficult to deal with and resorted as it usually does to pandering to its readers prejudices (witness the treatment of the minority population of Belfast as it struggled to get the vote or the branding of all Moslem folk as terrorists). This resulted in all Teddy Boys being unjustly branded by the actions of the irresponsible few. So the dictionary reflects a meaning created by The Daily Mirror rather than what actually went on.

          I don’t like to see these myths perpetuated and will continue to object to them.

          1. On the facts, I don’t think the minority population of Belfast was struggling to get the vote. The problem with votes was that as a minority, theirs made very little difference.

             False stories about people are part of life – ask the original Vandals and Huns. What puzzles me is your apparent belief that the Times crossword is the place for myths to be corrected, or for society’s lack of enthusiasm for science to be corrected. Win the battles in the places that matter, and the crossword will follow – though the battle for fair treatment of teds seems to have been lost about 50 years ago.

             1. Dear me, Peter. Your knowledge of Irish history needs some revision. You also underestimate the effect that comment in a forum such as this can have upon an unseen audience. Anyway, what a boring place blogs would be if we didn’t have some fun with myths and the like.
                1. Maybe we’re talking about different periods – in my lifetime (after some web reading) there have been issues like gerrymandering, but not disenfranchisement as far as I can tell.

                   I’d love to believe in the power of this blog but I’m sceptical – I search for links to us and mentions of us from time to time, and can’t recall seeing anything outside other crossword-related discussions or material about crosswords.

                   1. Voting arrangements which gave commercial companies multiple votes according to size and which restricted the personal franchise to property owners, primary tenants and their spouses (who were virtually all protestants) continued in Northern Ireland until 1969 and were only ended by the 1969 Electoral Law Act (NI). This and gerrymandering drove the formation of the Belfast/Londonderry based provisional IRA (a very different organisation to the communist leading original IRA)

                      As to influence, time will tell but I don’t restrict my thoughts to the world of crosswords. Consider the type of people who read The Times and do the crossword. This an exciting new means of communication the potential of which is as yet unknown.

16. 18:25 .. which was a pleasant surprise, given that it was a struggle throughout.

    Could do without the product placement in 27a. Otherwise, tricky but fair. I did enjoy THOUSANDS.

    1. Right chavvish, that, luv.
17. My first time posting here… sorry if I’m breaking any rules. 4dn, I see the ‘oil’ could be a work of art, but how does ‘chess people’ relate to ‘fide’?
    1. Welcome, zskai

       George did include a hyperlink for FIDE, but didn’t spell it out. FIDE is Fédération Internationale des Échecs – the World Chess Federation.

       One of those ‘once seen, never forgotten’ devices that pop up occasionally.

    2. No rules broken – we mostly only have customs here (like saying how long the puzzle took us – common but not compulsory).

       As sotira says, when you next see “chess people” you’ll be ready, but it could be a long wait. The point to pick up is the {“activity, people” or similar = abbreviation for organisation} pattern – {“footballers” = FA} is a classic example, as is {“motorists” or “car men” = AA or RAC} (pushed together as Carmen elsewhere, but no longer at the Times).

18. Stuck on 5D for too long because I did not see HATH (3rd person singular) instead of HAST (2nd person singular). As usual all became clear when I woke up this morning and I was able to polish off the tricky NE corner. To PD’s reasons for difficulty I would add, in my case, wanting to put GUST (taste) in 7d.

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